Tales of Midbar: Religious Intolerance

Mum made some more notes, “That closes a few more gaps. The shrine crypt is where the associate is that Lishrashic’s bound to. We also know how that’s connected to the red-haired girl. There was a picture of a woman who looked racially mixed, with her hair sticking out like she was falling or something. Does that mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“I think we totally need to do the revelation spell on the red-haired girl,” I said. “She has tons of predestination lines including ones to Eleprin and Lishrashic.”

“The Haprihagfen won’t like that,” said Mum.

“There’s no way they’d let a Temple Prostitute out on his own,” said Iandris.

“This was in the future so perhaps something odd’s going to happen,” said Mum.

“Very odd!” said Iandris. “Ooo, when I told Eleprin’s fortune I saw her kissing a man in a temple and then being attacked by monsters. I thought she was going to become a Temple Prostitute ...”

“No!” said Renisho.

“... but the man was young, not your regular Temple Prostitute client and I was really spooked out by the monsters. Not like it was her first client scary, it was much worse.”

“We still need to do more diagnosis before we can devise a plan,” said Mum. “The only people we can identify from those pictures are Eleprin, the red-haired girl and your friends from Grishnarl, who you won’t tell us about ...”

“I can’t!” said Renisho. “Eleprin and Breeze, the red-haired girl, knew the name of the hairy man.”

“Is he a Haprihagfen?” asked Mum.

“I think so,” said Renisho.

“So he won’t cooperate with Old Magic,” said Mum. “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to do this but I think we need ... well Renisho you probably don’t want to hear this.”

I was trying to get to sleep in my room but there was a lot of noise coming from the room above. First there were some animal noises and then singing and music and thumping around. I considered asking them to stop but thought whoever was on duty would do it.

I was walking with Lishrashic and Yoldasia. They both looked younger than they really did. We kept going to different places, houses, schools, streets, offices, mountainsides, the desert, farms, the occasional spaceship and some things I wasn’t sure of or seemed to be on other planets. We kept meeting people who Lishrashic questioned and Yoldasia wrote things down in a book. I only remember this vaguely and it seemed to go on for a very long time. At one point we met Pardnis in a place with lots of trees. He had both arms and was very angry. Another time we were in a small room, like a prison cell and there was a fair-haired girl I didn’t know who was curled up in the corner crying. Me and Lishrashic tried talking to her kindly.

“My life is ruined!” she said.

We were in a large house, like some rich people live in. There were lots of robots and a faharni boy about my age.

“Does Mother want you to marry me?” he asked.

“No, she hates me.”

I don’t know why I said that because I had no idea who he or his mother were.

It seemed that the people we were meeting and places we were going were getting stranger and stranger.

There was a faharni boy in some sort of museum who kept going on about artifacts.

Then we were on a flingball pitch with people nailed to crosses and a quippa boy who said he hated Winemakers.

After that people seemed to be getting very angry or mixed up.

I was sitting alone outside the back door eating breakfast. I had a nasty headache and felt very tired. It was blue day, which rather fitted my dull mood.

“Ta da!” shouted Miandri, jumping down from the second floor and landing with a huge smile on her face.

“What?” I said.

“Not feeling well?”

“No.”

“Let’s try this!” she pointed at me and the headache went although I still felt very tired.

“Thanks, I think.”

“I wondered if you’ll explain something to me,” she stood there smiling at me with her grey eyes boring into me. “Why do most your predestination lines lead to people who don’t live in Minris and have never heard of you or Lishrashic?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps because I’m going to be important.”

“We were following your predestination lines to find out who put the spell on Lishrashic.”

“Why didn’t you follow Lishrashic’s predestination lines?”

“He doesn’t have many and the strongest one leads to you and the next strongest to your red-haired friend. Also that revelation spell indicated the connection between you and Lishrashic is complicated.”

“Did you put another spell on me last night? Is that why I was dreaming of Lishrashic and your mother all night?”

“Probably.”

“You’re not supposed to use magic on me.”

“You know it’s totally uncool to tell on people and I know some of your secrets but I’m not going to tell.”

My blood ran cold. What did she know? Would she really keep the secrets?

“Anyway,” said Miandri, “can you see it from Lishrashic’s point of view, the poor guy’s stuck in Minris and has no idea why.”

I wasn’t sure if Mum and Dad would have a core meltdown if they discovered that Breeze was a magis and had been teaching me magic.

“It seems that your predestination lines lead to a number of magi,” said Miandri.

“I’m going to become a mage and my best friend’s a magis.”

“A lot of them also lead to Nuharas who live in Rendamar and even Aramator.”

“I’ve no idea why that is. Perhaps the magic’s fornicated up.”

At that point the Benai Haprihagfen came round the corner of the hotel and started heading towards us.

“How do I get back up?” asked Miandri. “I think I could use a repulsion associate. Hold your stuff!”

She took a run at the table, I just had time to grab my plate and cup before she leapt onto the table and then shot up, knocked some joints off a cholla, which came down and stuck to me with their vicious spines and then I lost sight of her.

A cholla is similar to a prickly pear but with sausage-shaped joints that fall off easily. They have very nasty spines.

“That looks painful,” said Cloud.

“I think I can get them off,” said Breeze.

She did manage to take them off, using magic, but mangled a few of them (I like to plant them). I realized that they weren’t hurting as much as I’d expected and that the painkiller spell Miandri had put on me must have been dulling the pain.

Me, Mum and Vritan looked at the mess. We’d had to clean up a few messy rooms before but never one like this.

“Who was killed?” asked Vritan.

There was a pool of blood in the middle of the room, the bed had been pushed out the way. There was also lots of blood splattered around.

“This was Yoldasia and Miandri’s room,” said Mum. “I’d have expected better of a mage. Criadria did test the blood and it isn’t human.”

“That cholla!” I said noticing spiny stems extending above the wall.

I took a leap off the bed onto the top of the wall and looked down. Yes there was the table and chairs outside our apartment door.

“Be careful!” said Mum.

I jumped back down into the room. “This is the room that all the noise was coming from last night. I think they did some weird magic. You know Yoldasia combines Old Magic with associate magic, which is very dangerous and unreliable.”

“You’re getting close to graduating from annoying to scary,” said Vritan.

“I do wish you wouldn’t absorb knowledge about magic,” said Mum. “People don’t like magi and looking at this mess I can see why. Fortunately we’ve got a cleaning artifact.” She got out a small geodeserine dome and placed it on the floor in the middle of the room. “Vivinartam! Now get out!”

We left the room and closed the door behind us. There was a buzzing and fizzing noise. We opened the door. The blood and dirt had gone, the branches of the cholla had been singed, but the furniture was still a mess.